tmux-ide

Other tools rebuild the terminal to understand agents. tmux-ide teaches the terminal you already use to understand them.

One command adds a native chrome to any tmux session: a fleet of tabs with live agent-status glyphs, ground-truth working/blocked/done detection, notifications when an agent needs you, and a crash-proof restore that rebuilds your whole fleet — including your Claude conversations. It's built around tmux, not on top of a reinvented terminal, so there's nothing to migrate and nothing to lock into.

npm i -g tmux-ide
tmux-ide adopt work    # add the chrome to a session you already have

adopt is just tmux options. tmux-ide unadopt work reverts it, and if tmux-ide ever dies, your sessions are untouched plain tmux.

The three-beat story

1 — Adopt in place. tmux-ide adopt <session> drops a status bar onto any existing session: clickable fleet tabs, per-agent glyphs, and [ ⌂ home ] [ ⧉ switch ] [ ? keys ] triggers. Because the chrome lives server-side, it renders from any client — including SSH from a laptop or a phone. See The dock & keys.

2 — Know your fleet. Install the Claude Code integration and working/blocked/done come straight from the agent's own lifecycle. A toast fires on every attached client the moment an agent goes blocked or done; per-pane border chips read claude · working. See Agent detection and Notifications & events.

3 — Survive anything. Continuous snapshots mean a tmux server death isn't a lost afternoon. tmux-ide restore rebuilds every session, window, layout, cwd, and title; --resume-agents revives your Claude conversations from their recorded session ids. See Restore & resume.

One app, a keystroke away

Once a session is adopted, the whole UI is a couple of keystrokes away — one interaction grammar (j/k move, enter opens, / filters, esc backs out, ? asks) and one theme file.

Every surface has a prefix twin (prefix then a letter) that works under every keyboard protocol, plus an ⌥ fast-path for a single keystroke when your terminal allows it. Lead with the prefix — an agent pane can temporarily swallow root-table Alt binds, but the tmux prefix always reaches tmux.

See Home, sidebar & panels and The dock & keys.

Start here

Requirements

• tmux — 3.2+ recommended (doctor requires ≥ 3.0; some chrome features assume newer builds; 3.6 is the smoothest)
• Node.js — ≥ 20
• Bun — only for the TUI surfaces (home, sidebar, and the floating widget panels)

Run tmux-ide doctor to check your machine.